This time Iris was silent so long that he went on speaking with an attempt at a lighter tone.
"Well, that's the story--and a pretty gloomy one, isn't it? But I have no right to inflict my private sorrows on you, and so----"
She interrupted him as though she had not heard his last words.
"Dr. Anstice, when you realized what had happened, what did you do? I mean, when you came back to England? I suppose you did come back, after that?"
"Yes. I had an interview with the man--the girl's fiancé and came home." He shrugged his shoulders, a bitter memory chasing away the softer emotions of the preceding moment. "What did I do? Well, I did what a dozen other fellows might have done in my place. I sought forgetfulness of the past by various means, tried to drown the thought of what had happened in every way I could, and merely succeeded in delivering myself over to a bondage a hundred times more terrible than that from which I was trying to escape."
For the first time Iris looked perplexed.
"I don't think I understand," she said, and again Anstice's face changed.
"No," he said, and his voice was gentle, "of course you don't. And there's no reason why you should. Let us leave the matter at that, Miss Wayne. I am grateful to you for listening so patiently to my story."
"Ah," she said, and her eyes were wistful, "but I should like to know what you meant just now. Won't you tell me? Or do you think I am too stupid to understand?"
"No. But I think you are too young," he said; and the girl coloured.
"Of course if you would rather not----"
Something in her manner made him suddenly change his mind.
"There is no reason why I should make a mystery of it," he said. "I hesitated about telling you because--well, for various reasons; but after all you might as well know the truth. I tried to win forgetfulness by the aid of drugs--morphia, to be exact."
He had startled her now.
"You took morphia----?" Her voice was dismayed.
"Yes, for nearly six months I gave myself up to it. I told myself there was no real danger for me--I knew the peril of it so well. I wasn't like the people who go in ignorantly for the thing; and find themselves bound hand and foot, their lives in ruins round them. That is what I thought, in my folly." He sighed, and his face looked careworn. "Well, I soon found out that I was just like other people after all. I went into the thing, thinking I should find a way out of my troubles. And I was wrong."